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Luca Cottini, "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Luca Cottini
Hello everybody.
- [00:01]
Marshall Po
This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
Caleb Zakrin
I'm Caleb Zakrin, CEO and publisher of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Luca Cottini, professor of Italian Studies at Villanova University and creator of the YouTube channel Italian Innovators. We're discussing his book the Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919. Luca's book examines the development of a complex American ideology that transformed from an embryonic state to, during the nation's founding in 1776 to a crystallized set of values in the era of Teddy Roosevelt. The American mythos and identity intersected with the Italian claim to Christopher Columbus and his voyage to the new world. Also central was the export and expansion of American ideas, celebrities and manufactured goods to Italy and Europe. More broadly, immigration from Italy to the United States and the specter of German and French cultural dominance in Italy made America and Americanism seductive. Too often we examine national identities in isolation, reinforcing myths of self contained development. In reality, as Luca's book shows, Americanism owes a debt to Italy and the development of Italian culture was heavily influenced by America. To explore Americanism in Italy around the turn of the 20th century, I'm happy to have Luca Catini on the New Books Network. Luca, thanks for joining me today.
- [02:20]
Luca Cottini
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure being here.
- [02:23]
Caleb Zakrin
This is a really fun book to read, really interesting in part because I feel like you explored America and American identity through the. Through this angle that I had not really considered heavily before. Obviously, you know, every single time that. That Christopher Columbus Day rolls around, there's always a bit of a debate about the, you know, the role of Italy and Italian culture and Italian people to America. But I. I think that this book, you know, not only does it cast a lot of light on. On American culture and America's development, but it really also does show the extent to which American ideas and American values had a very profound influence on Italy's culture, especially around the turn of the century. So I'm looking forward to getting the chance to speak with you about this book. But before jumping into the topic, why don't you just introduce yourself to listeners, tell us a little about yourself, about your work, and about the Italian Innovators project that you've been working on.
- [03:17]
Luca Cottini
Well, thank you. I'm a professor of Italian Studies at Villanova, which is a college of liberal arts and sciences. I directed the Italian Studies program for years. My scholarship focuses on the period in between the 19th and the 20th century of the early industrialization. My first book was on the origins of Italian design, and I'm also kind of a literary scholar of that age. At the same time, while working on design, I placed myself in between the world of culture, the humanities, and the world of business. So the world of industry, which to me are kind of very, very interrelated culture. Cultura in Latin means cultivation. Industry means industriousness, so laboriousness. They both have to do with the optimization of something in the material and in the intellectual world. So how to bring value to something. This is the object of my interest with the platform of Italian Innovators, where I present stories of Italian designers, entrepreneurs who found great ideas, and from this soil, where industry is something that has to do with culture. So exploring this alternative approach to entrepreneurship and innovation from an Italian standpoint.
- [04:36]
Caleb Zakrin
Right. And I feel like that's highly relevant to this book. You look at lots of different innovators and the role and impact they had on culture, and vice versa. I want to talk about this notion of Americanism, because the beginning of the book, in your introduction, you explore this idea of what Americanism is. And obviously, as you point out, it's a very complex idea, depending on who you ask. Whether you're asking maybe Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt or other people, Americanism means something different. So could you just introduce this concept of Americanism, obviously, we will develop it as we go. But just to situate our listeners, well.
- [05:14]
Luca Cottini
We'Re in the age of anti Americanism. So this is something that happened after 1945. There are different waves of anti Americanism. So I just wanted go back to the origin of what we are against or supposedly against. So the notion of Americanism as a debate, a historical debate that took place in the late 19th century with the Great Emigration, a debate that here in the United States forced American citizens to reflect upon what American identity consists of. So this is started by Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and it kind of develops up until the years of the Wilson presidency. This is the height, the peak of the Americanism debate. Now, from my perspective, so observing the United States from Italy, the word Americanism means all that Italians think of America at the time of the great immigration. So this imagination of the United States that is born out of the fact that many Italians are moving to the US And Italians that are still in Italy imagine the US through the stories of the immigrants or through debates that present the United States in a negative key. Because from an Italian perspective, the United States were drawing Italian blood away from Italy. So. And Americanism is also, from an American perspective, is the export ideology that is accompanying the first push for an American globalization or globalized industry. A lot of the American companies were bringing to Europe and to Italy in particular, because of immigration. That was a great soil for American industry. They were bringing the American way of life. And I didn't mention this in the book, but if you're familiar with baseball, there were like a few tours of world tours of presentation of baseball in the 1890s and in 1913 and 14, where Americans brought this American gay to Europe as part of the exposition, to the world of the American way of life. That is called Americanism, too. So the word contains many facets. And I like to observe it from the two perspectives of America toward Italy and Italy toward America.
- [07:47]
Caleb Zakrin
Right. And that exchange is very fascinating, how it occurs. Who brings the various ideas, because the certain individuals there. You know, you even have examples in a way of, like things that we. That might be unexpected, like the spaghetti Western, the origins of the spaghetti Western being in Buffalo Bill's tour of Italy and Italians becoming fascinated with this notion of the American West. There are many different threads and interesting, interesting stories you can pull on here with this idea of Americanism.
- [08:18]
Luca Cottini
And to me, this idea is a key trait to explore the relationships between Italy and the United States in this early stage. So prior to World War II, and the notion of Americanism is related to me, to the notion of transatlantism. So through this idea that Americanism is a concept that built by both Italians and Americans, I challenged the notion that, like, the movements across the Atlantic Ocean were unidirectional. So just Italians that were emigrating to the United States. But I also want to introduce the other direction, a common construction of this transatlantism. So while there are a lot of studies on Italian immigrants in the great immigration between 1880 and 1920, my book is also exploring the story of Americans that were in Italy at that time, exporting the American way of life. Among them, Edison, J.P. morgan, Buffalo Bill, Wilbur Wright, Fiorello LaGuardia. People that, like, are part of the American kind of mythology, in a way, of those years. Also, Roosevelt and Wilson were in Italy at that time. They were welcomed both as heroes in the Peninsula.
- [09:44]
Caleb Zakrin
Right? Yeah. No, it's interesting to get there. I want to start in this year, 1888, where you first begin. And obviously this coincides with the immigration law passed in Italy. Can you talk about this law and how it impacted Italian immigration?
- [10:00]
Luca Cottini
So until 1888, immigration was illegal in Italy. This might be shocking, but the law of 1888 primarily ratifies a situation that was evolving, which was a crisis of Italian agriculture that forced a lot of peasants to undertake seasonal migrations, mostly in South America. Why? Because they could take advantage of the winter season, the summer in South America, to kind of gain a little bit more. So immigration up until 88 was mostly a seasonal phenomenon, and it was tolerated in the United States. The colony where Italians were more present was actually New Orleans, because the Sicilians took advantage of a new line that was created between Palermo and New Orleans. And New Orleans, it was kind of a similar climate to Sicily. There was a need of agricultural labor. So Sicilians formed a big colony, 30,000 people. And this became a problem later on we might discuss it. But in 1888, the Italian state ratified that the seasonal immigrations were okay and produced this law as a way to track Italians and avoid human trafficking. Now, this law unfortunately determined a situation, however, where suddenly this myth of going abroad to gain riches became legitimized. And so the law that was supposed to track immigration and keep it as a seasonal phenomenon to remedy the lack of liquidity of the Italian state, actually ratified a phenomenon that would last for 40 years and would become what we call the great immigration. Now, stats about like the Italians that are traveling during these decades vary because most of the travelers stayed in the new destinations. But about half of Them actually returned to Italy, they were richer and they kind of got out of the cycle of poverty. But often in Italy they were looked with some suspicion because they went to America and they came back and they had their pockets and their wallets filled. And so they were kind of marginalized. So this is one of the phenomena of immigration that you can also label as Americanism. The returnees that come and that had acquired an American way of life and exported back to Italy. So the law is the beginning of this phenomenon which we call the great immigration. And there was a big debate about it, both from the socialist part and the Vatican, which express negative views about this idea of allowing people to leave their country. This for the Church was considered a sin. And for kind of the rhetoric of Italian patriotism, it was also considered something immoral like to leave your country behind and go somewhere else.
- [13:18]
Caleb Zakrin
A significant part of American history and you go into this is the, just the, the, the degree and extent of anti Catholic sentiment. Obviously there were, there were waves of anti Catholic sentiment directed towards the Irish immigrants that, that initially came. There was the Native American party that was founded, not actually about American Indians, but having to do with, you know, the Anglo Saxon stock that were, were fearful of the, the Catholics that might be loyal to the, the Pope as opposed to, loyal to the, you know, to American democracy. How were the Italians received? You go into in some detail looking at some high profile incidences of anti Italian sentiment directed at the newly arrived immigrants.
- [14:07]
Luca Cottini
Well, there are two elements here. One is the anti Italian elements and the anti Catholic element. The anti Italian element kind of takes its manifest form in 1891 with the lynching of New Orleans. Thirteen Italians are lynched, are accused of killing the head of the police in New Orleans and a mob goes into the jail of New Orleans. And Lynch's 13 of them, 11 were Sicilians. Now this is an episode that created the first and only rupture of diplomatic ties between Italy and the United States. And there was on Italian newspapers even the temptation to wage a war against the United states gates in 1891. Now this produces like a situation which will be solved in 1892 with the opening of the Italian embassy in Washington D.C. and the opening of the first nunciatura. So the Vatican embassy in D.C. which were meant to give Italians that were immigrating to the United States some sort of protection, legal protection. Now under the constitutional law, Italians or migrants were protected against lynching. But under the Louisiana law that was not the case. So that was kind of an internal friction also inside the United States between the law of Louisiana and the federal law. So this generated a situation of rupture and then rehabilitation of the relationships between Italy and the United States. From the point of view of the anti Catholicism, this is where the figure of Columbus becomes interesting. Because at a time when Italy, the secular state and the Holy See were at odds in the peninsula, their relationship in the United States actually took the form of collaboration. So the Vatican and the Italian state here in the US or in immigration territories had a common goal which was to protect their own citizens, to allow them to maintain their faith and to maintain their language. So priests that were sent as missionaries were tolerated by the states, the Italian state, because they were speaking Italian and they opened Italian schools and helped the immigrants maintain their ties with the motherland. So in this sense, the Pope Leo XIII and also the Italian state supported a narrative that presented Columbus as kind of a pioneering figure or a towering figure in American history, and as the pioneer that allowed all American history to unfold. This was a way to create a founding myth that would prevent Italians from being persecuted, saying, hey, we came first, one of ours came here, so you have to protect our own people. Now Columbus also became a founding figure for the American rhetoric. It's in 1892 that in the context of the fourth centenary of Columbus Voyage to the New World, Americans actually pushed to establish the United States no longer as a heterogeneous mix of different ethnicities, but as its own culture, as its own nation. So in this sense, Columbus was presented in its second moment, so as a pioneer that was kind of going west to find something unknown, uncharted. And that was at the time where the winning of the west, according to Teddy Roosevelt's narrative, was happening. And 1892 is also the time where Anthony Zworcak, the composer, presented the Symphony of the New World, which was supposed to be the first American symphony. So Columbus was the founding father of Americans, of Catholics and Italians. So in this sense there is a convergence of ideologies around his figure. And that's the time where all the monuments that are being torn down have been erected in the first place.
- [18:40]
Caleb Zakrin
Right. And so. So alongside the development of merit of Americanism, we're also seeing the development of. Of what? Of Colombianism, where there's this very self conscious idea that Columbus is the founding father. It, you know, the original founding father in a. In a ways of America, of Americanism. Could you talk a little about Colombian? Like you've already explained a little bit, but this. Yeah, so very self conscious creation. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:04]
Luca Cottini
What we call Americanism took the name of Colombianism first, and it was all generated in the two years between 1892 and 1893. So 1892 is the year when Genoa hosts the Exposition Italo American Exposition to celebrate the fourth century of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. In the exposition of Chicago, Italy, Spain and the United States gathered for the first time all the artifacts that were related to Columbus. Columbus was not a particularly important figure in the 16th century. Amerigo Vespucci was. In fact, he was the guy after whom America was named. Columbus reappeared in the collective imagination around the mid 19th century. There was actually a call for his beatification, meaning the recognition of his work, of his discovery as something providential for the propagation of faith. Now, this process of canonization is still open, and I don't think it will go much further. But this tells us that around the 19th century there's a renewal, renewal of interest for his figure that suddenly creates this movement to gather all the artifacts around him and take him out of the darkness and the mythology and the conspiracy theories that are born around him. So again in the book, I don't want to enter too much into the Colombian debate. I just want to trace a historical record of how much around that time Columbus became a key figure for the self definition of Italians in the U.S. of Catholics in the U.S. and Americans in the time where they were trying to figure out what being American means. So the Americanist debate that we were talking about before this, yeah, Colombianist moment lasts very little. As soon as the Spanish American war hits in 1898, Colombianism is turned into an imperial project which then takes the name of Americanism.
- [21:29]
Marshall Po
Right.
- [21:29]
Caleb Zakrin
And this, you know, in a way, Columbus being the person that initiates the winning of the west, once the west is, obviously, it takes hundreds of years, but once the west is won, then the United States turns its ambitions to, you know, to the Spanish property, colonial properties, Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico. Could you talk a little bit about just this, this period and Teddy Roosevelt's imperial ambitions? Just a little bit about. More about Teddy Roosevelt, because you've. I think you do a really interesting job of just exploring Roosevelt's legacy in this broader context.
- [22:04]
Luca Cottini
Well, Teddy Roosevelt has to do with two moments. One is the Winning of the West. It's actually a series of volumes that he writes about the American winning conquest of the West. In this sense, the narrative of the Winning of the west relates to the Americanist debate because for Roosevelt, who writes explicitly about it, the American identity is not given by birth, but it's Actually earned. So he gives immigrants this possibility of earning their American identity. So in this sense, that rugged individualism that he celebrates in the figures of the pioneers that go out west is a metaphor of the journey of the trajectory of every immigrant that is coming to the United States that allows them to earn their place in this society, becoming American citizens themselves, not because they belong to a certain ethnicity or they were born here. So this is his way into Americanism. The other element of Americanism that relates to Roosevelt is, of course, the imperialist project that starts with the war over Cuba in 1898. This is a war that immediately follows another event that shook Europe two years before 1898, which was the colonial defeat of Italians in Ethiopia, in Adua. So that was the first time where a non European nation defeated in a military conflict, a European nation. That was really shocking to hear in Europe. The second time it happened was in 1898. All European newspapers were saying, well, Spain will win the war very easily. They could not accept that a non European nation could win the war. They were discarding the United States. And everybody was shocked when after three months, the war was pretty much over and the United States gained control, not just of Puerto Rico, Cuba, but also of Guam, the Philippines. And so it gained control over territories that were once Catholic territories, especially Cuba and the Philippines. So this raised the suspicion of the Catholic hierarchies. And actually the Pope tried to mediate between Washington and Madrid to finish, to negotiate a peace before the war started. And the suspicion that was raised about Americans, kind of Protestant nation going into Cuba and Philippines determined his reaction, which is recorded in this letter that Pope Leo XIII wrote against what he called Americanism as a heresy that then his successor, Pope Pius X, would call Modernism. So a way of seeing the faith as a national thing, as an individual experience, and also as a celebration of a faith that synthesizes the Bible and the secular word. So there was a lot of suspicion about the American experiment, where, as we know in the Constitution, there are, like, secular and biblical elements that are synthesized together. So this was looked with suspicion. And it took many years, up until the Second Vatican Council, to erase that suspicion toward the American Church. It's kind of interesting that now we have an American pope who took the name of Leo, and this is a significant element of continuity with our present.
- [26:05]
Caleb Zakrin
Right, yeah. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit at the end. Just the significance of the first American pope for thinking about what Americanism is, you know, having an American pope. Nobody saw that coming, I think, or at least Very few people saw it coming. But yeah, I would love to. We could talk about that at the end because it will, you know, it certainly casts, you know, a new relevance to this discussion at the turn of the century. Part of what you look at is the way in which, you know, this cultural exchange, not just Italians coming to America, but Americans going to Italy, whether that's to, you know, to showcase new inventions like flight, you know, to bring new cultural ideas. Can you talk a little about this period where, you know, where Italians were very fascinated by what was going on in the new world?
- [26:58]
Luca Cottini
Well, there are different ways in which Americans or American culture arrived to Italy. The main one was through tourism. With the new advances in kind of liners, travels, the speed to cross the Atlantic, more and more middle class Americans traveled to Italy to actually see it for the first time. It was part of their grand tour. This is actually confirmed by the Baedeker volumes, the guys that were like printed in pretty much every year, the late 19th century. Among these stories, there are a few that are really, really interesting. Some of them are artists, some of them are entrepreneurs, some of them are philanthropists. So I track the stories of some of them. So JP Morgan was one of them. He actually died in Rome. And while he was in Rome, the Pope celebrated his first funeral. And the King of Italy was also present at his first funeral. Why? Well, because he was one of the financiers that paid a big amount of the Italian debt for the wars of Independence, which is a story that is very little known in Italy. He was actually the guy that put together the collection for the Museum of La Scala. There was like a bid to outbid the secret American investor that wanted to buy the collection. And so a few Milanese artists created the Museum of La Scala, the theater, because of him. Also Edison created the first plant, Edison plant outside the United States in Milan. It was right close to the Duomo of Milan and right close to the theater of La Scala. And he was actually the presented the first theater, first ballet. It was called the Ballet Excelsior. That was illuminated with electric lighting. Of course, we know Isabella Stuart Gardner. She was a philanthropist, traveled to Italy several times between Venice and Florence. In Florence, there was also Bernard Berenson, art critic. It was a professor at Harvard. He was kind of like her mentor, allowed her to build her collection. And she brought her collection back to Boston, where she opened this villa, the Isabella Stuart Garden Museum, which is modeled after the Museo Pol di Pizzoli. It's the first private collection in Italy. It's In Milan. It's quite a remarkable museum. Then of course, Buffalo Bill brought to Italy in 1890 and 1906, his show. And his show was the first time in which something that had a cultural claim, like a culture show, was constructed by on an industrial scale. So he toured Italy and he managed to create his own fandom in Italy. In Bologna in 1890, he launched Popcorn. In 1890, he was in St Peter's Square and actually Leo XIII blessed the stage members, the crew of the show. So he had obtained a lot of visibility through that. And in the show of 1890, Giacomo Puccini himself saw the show and was impressed by it. And many people identified this as the beginning or the early seed of what would become, in 1910, La Fanchula del West, the Girl of the golden west, his opera that was presented in New York in 1910, December 10, 1910, in Italian in New York, on the American west reinvented by Italians. So this gives you the sense of how Americanism is a kind of a malleable concept. And also two other figures that are worth mentioning are like Sargent, the painter who depicted Venice, Capri and Sicily not as postcards. So he broke away from the picturesque representations of Italy that were pretty static, but he actually represented images like the undulated mosaic pavement of St. Mark's Basilica. So details that only someone from the outside could capture. And one other painting that is really remarkable is the Dance of Rosina in Capri. So a dancer of Capri that he found particularly explicative of the Italian milieu. Again, not the olive trees, the sea, the obvious images of Italy, but something that allows someone to capture modern Italy. And that's also the gaze of Henry James with his Italian hours. He travels throughout Italy, not just in Venice, Florence and Rome, but in the space in between. And he captures contemporary Italy. So he's basically observing how, for example, the Cinque Terre near the Gulf of La Spezia has become ugly now that he has become like the. The harbor of the Italian military fleet. Or he says that like the Carnival of Rome that was once folkloric, now it's kind of gone. And in a way he demystifies Italy. So this is like one of the contributions that American travelers bring to the context of like the Italian self understanding. Breaking these pre made images and opening the space for a question. What is Italian identity? What does Italian identity look like? And this is kind of the same question about Americanism. And it's fascinating to see how they negotiate them in dialogue. One culture in dialogue with the Other.
- [32:53]
Caleb Zakrin
Yeah. Even though you're able just in that moment, I think, to do a great overview of all different important figures from America who came to Italy and saw it with new eyes or brought different ideas and had cultural exchange. There's still so many people that you had to leave out of that. Like, you really do cover a lot, a lot of other people and ideas. The influence of American pragmatism, theosophy, other ideas that were really coming. I mean, the turn of the century, turn of the 20th century is just one of the most unbelievable time periods for cultural development. Obviously, everyone was reacting and really, I think, metabolizing the Industrial Revolution and the new world that was being birthed. So I think this chapter, chapter four is such an incredible, just description of this. So even if someone is just interested in this aspect of it, I really recommend reading that chapter because you really go through all these different figures. In chapter five, you turn towards a bit more towards Woodrow Wilson and Wilson's idea of Americanism because he picks up the mantle of Americanism from Roosevelt and transforms it further in a way that really has a kind of a whole theory. He has a whole theory about how the world is going to sort of fit together. Could you talk about Wilson's ideas? And then we can get a little bit into World War I and the impact of Wilson's worldview.
- [34:18]
Luca Cottini
So Wilson presents an image of Americanism which is radically different from the one we explored with Teddy Roosevelt. For Wilson, Americanism had to do with sort of a universal brotherhood. So the values that American that represents are kind of universal values. And in this sense, Americanism connects with his Pan Americanism movement. So the idea of the two Americas, north and south, joined together in this common identity. But in the occasion of World War I, Americanism becomes a way to export these values as universal gifts of brotherhood. So this is also functional to presenting America as kind of a universal referee or a force super partes on top of the nations that are fighting in Europe. This is important because we normally have a tendency to think that Americans entered World War I on April 6, 1917, when they place their boots on the ground in France. Well, it was actually April 6, it was when it was approved the motion to go to war. So summer of 17, where Americans place boots on the ground. But actually in the book, I trace how American intervention in Europe starts way earlier. So from 1914 through 1917, America adopts a policy of intervention that uses like the soft power of YMCAs or the American Red Cross to be present to provide help, to provide relief but at the same time, to use the American Red Cross or the YMCA as tools for propaganda or tools for the propagation of Wilsonianism or Americanism as a Wilsonian version of Americanism. So this is important because, like, while in the US There is a big debate about entering the war or not. Roosevelt definitely pushed toward entrance in the war, but there was some hesitancy because, like, the biggest immigrant group in the United States was from Germany. So you could have, like, a situation where entering the war meant to have, like, an enemy within, a big contingent of enemies within. So in this sense, I used the notes of an American diplomat, Gino Speranza, who travels to Italy around this time, so in 1915, and documents the life in Italy in the two years prior to American intervention. And in a way, he documents how consular forces, healthcare, kind of the building of new hospitals and YMCAs, which were present also in Sardinia and Sicily, not just on the front line, were there to kind of prepare the soil for what would happen next. In fact, when Americans actually arrived to Italy, Italians were already prepared and they already had a love for Wilson and everything American, not just through propaganda, but also through the stories of the immigrants that had left 20, 30 years prior, and they had become rich and they were maybe returned to Italy and they create this fertile soil for Americans to land in a context where they could be welcome.
- [37:59]
Caleb Zakrin
Right. And you look at Wilson's role in Italy, the sort of the rise of the love for him and the fall from grace. Can you talk about Wilson, Wilson's post World War I experience in Italy?
- [38:16]
Luca Cottini
Yeah. So he traveled to Italy for the first time in January 1919. From January 2 to January 6, he was welcomed as a hero. Actually, on Italian newspapers, he was called as the new secular messiah. Why? Well, first of all, because of this preparation work. Then because, like, in 17 and 18, there was like, a deliberate effort to propagate American ideals that was led by none other than Fiorello laguardia. Ferrelo laguardia was the first Italian American representative elected to the Congress. He was an immigration lawyer. He grew up in Istria, like near Adriatic Sea, and spoke seven languages, work in New York as a lawyer. The lawyer of the people was elected as soon as the United States entered the war. He traveled to Italy, went to Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, where his father was from, and created the 1st Aviation Battalion. He actually collaborated with Caproni. Gianni Caproni is one of the pioneers of military aviation. So he rode his airplanes and was involved in combat. So that gave him the Credibility to speak to Italians and being an Ambassador of the U.S. united States for Italians. So that was kind of the gift that Americans brought to Italians more than combat. It was morale, cigarettes, chocolate, and even money. So Americans distributed money in Italian cities. So that's why they were loved. When Wilson comes, he's welcomed as the guy behind all this. So that's why they call him a messiah. The problem with Wilson starts in April when he decides in Paris. Well, he spends that whole semester, early semester of 1919, in Europe. And in Paris he attributes like Istria and Dalmatia to this newly formed state that he calls Yugoslavia. Now, Istria and Dalmatia were part of secret pacts that Italy has signed with London to enter the war in 1915. They were promised to Italians. So as soon as they were given to another formation, this created a lot of res. So the Italian Prime Minister Orlando stepped out of the Versailles conference and peace conference and Italians suddenly turned their back toward Wilson. And this is where I locate the beginning of another movement, which is the movement that I call Italianism. So the sense of a nation that wants to affirm its identity in antagonism with America, that was up until a few days before its partner. A phenomenon of Italianism. Where Italianism is revealed is also In June of 1919, when the Inter Allied Games are organized. So sort of a micro Olympic Games that were created by General Pershing in the American General to entertain the American soldiers that were still in Europe, six, seven, eight months after the end of the war. The demobilization was slow because of the Spanish flu, the influenza. And so Pershing wanted to entertain soldiers and he organized this Olympics for soldiers of the Allied forces. This occasion, Italy, the United States and France participated to the first basketball tournament. Of course, the US won with Italy and France battle. The game that everybody wanted to see was Italy versus France. So Italians won. And that coincided with a lot of like rhetoric on the Italian newspapers about like this revanche, like this sentiment of kind of resentment and national affirmation that then creates the soil for the development of what would become later Fascist nationalism A few years later. And in 1919, I also mentioned an article where young Benito Mussolini was denouncing Wilson as a coward and so building this myth of Italianism as a reaction to an American betrayal.
- [42:51]
Caleb Zakrin
Right. It seems that after that and with the rise of fascism, that there's a sort of going a back and forth between how Italians feel about America, feel about Americans, that at various points in time there's a peak of anti Americanism to more of like, necessarily pro Americanism, but, you know, a feeling of connection towards America, this sort of. This back and forth. Obviously, you know, the focus of the book isn't this period. You know, the book. You know, your focus really ends in 1919. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the broader legacy of the study of Americanism and how you think. How do you think you can sort of, in very broad brush, trace the rise and fall of Americanism in Italy from 1919 to the present day?
- [43:41]
Luca Cottini
Well, on the one hand, there's a scholarly element where I locate my research. There are a few questions about terms that we normally use that some scholars decide to take seriously. So the first is, what is Americanization? And of course, here, Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire is kind of a point of reference here. The second question is like, what is America? And in this sense, Widow Bonsaver, America in Italian culture is a must read. So it's really an exploration of the meanings of this word in my context. I respond to the question, what is Americanism? Because I want to tap into this debate, historical debate, but also reflect upon the meanings of this word or ideology that we are supposedly against, but sometimes we are against it without knowing what Americanism meant in the first place. So in this sense, the book doesn't have the claim to solve the issue of. Of American position in the world, but certainly it offers a point of reflection through history and through a marginal reading. So Italian reading of kind of a core history and a piece of American history that might allow to see in it something productive. So in this context, generally, with regard to Americanism, all our sources from Europe are mainly French. So I wanted to introduce an element of another point of view of Italian culture, which I find incredibly relevant because of the particular story of immigration that Italy knows. And that makes the peninsula, the Italian peninsula, a privileged soil for American penetration and for a dialogue, a transatlantic dialogue. So in this sense, the word Americanism, taken historically, means a whole lot of things, but it might also trigger a reflection on what it means now. And certainly, what is American identity? What is America's role in the world? Are not questions that are exhausted, as we all know. So in this sense, I want to take them historically so that looking at them from a distance, we could actually talk about them and not end up in a clash depending on kind of different ideological positions. So that's kind of the work of a cultural historian and the contribution that a cultural historian can give also to the reading of the present. We read the past because we want to understand something in the present. So that's my contribution.
- [46:28]
Caleb Zakrin
Yeah, I think one aspect, at least for me, where I found myself thinking a lot about, I think some of the ideas that you explore in the book, and this was even before I learned about your book, was Pope Leo XIV Robert Prevost's ascent to become the first North American Pope or first US Pope. Obviously we've had two back to back American Popes. If you, if you, if you, if you count South America and North America together. Many people said that, that, that, that this would not happen because they, they would, they would not pick an American Pope, they wouldn't pick a Pope from, from a superpower like America because it would give America too much influence on the global stage and in Catholicism, you know. Secondly, a lot of people, at least in what I was reading, were anticipating that the next Pope was going to be an Italian because it had been so long since there had been an Italian Pope. Could you talk a little bit about Pope Leo, how his reception has been in Italy, him being an American. Many people also pointed out the extent to which, you know, Pope Leo has butted heads in the past with J.D. vance, the Vice President of the United States. So yeah, I'll just leave it at that.
- [47:48]
Luca Cottini
Well, I have to say it was an unexpected election certainly, but his name, the choice of the name Leo was actually the most obvious of all choices. Why? And this goes back to the book. On the one hand, an American Pope was unexpected also because of the continuing suspicion surrounding the American church or the American experiment as the only context where again Athens and Jerusalem are synthesized in the Constitution, in the American experiment. So a very, very secular element coming from the Enlightenment and a very, very biblical element coming from the pilgrims that are joined together in this experiment that has been lasting for 250 years. This is a unique thing. And being unique also, the Church had a hard time understanding it over time. The place that I explore in the book is actually where this suspicion matures with this letter on Americanism that in the way I explain it, comes from a diplomatic glitch in a way, more than a doctrinal condemnation. Leo XIII was actually very fond of the United States and it was the Pope that established many of the parishes and the diocese of the United States, especially why the United States were moving west. So for an American Pope, well, Leo XIII is the Pope that really contributed the most to creating the Church in the United States, the Catholic Church in the United States establishing its structure. On the other hand, I'm not surprised by the name Leo because actually, as I point out in the book, the document Rerum Novarum that starts the Catholic social doctrine and which Pope Leo XIV reference in his own choice, saying, well, we're in the time of AI. There's something that is shifting and a new other new things, like in the title of the Rerum Novarum. Well, that document, Rerum Novarum was actually drafted by an American cardinal. It was Cardinal Gibbons. He's the second ever American to be elected cardinal. He was very close to Pope Leo XIII, actually, in the 1880s, in the Italian newspapers, he was considered a papable cardinal. And everybody was rejecting the idea as coming from another planet. Like how in the world a Baltimore cardinal could ever aspire to papacy. I wish they could read what happened like 125 years later. But Gibbons was the cardinal that first saw the development of industrialization and urbanization as movements that were important for the Church to look at and for the future of the Church. And he saw these new masses of migrants that were coming to the the US and perhaps losing their faith and losing their identity as perhaps the migrants that are coming now into the us how do they retain that? So out of that concern, he wrote to Leo xiii, asking him to address the situation and actually drafted the first text of Rerum Novarum, which Then Leo the 13th edited and published in his name. So I'm pretty sure that Leo XIV took the name Leo in honor of the Pope that established the structure of the Church in the us but also the Pope who was able to see, even in the midst of this experiment that is new and perhaps sometimes difficult to understand, he was able to see that there was something new that the Church needed to observe with a different gaze. So in this sense, the same gaze that Americans brought to Italy, not to replicate the images that they saw, but to see the point where work needed to be done or a form of reading needed to be addressed. So in this sense, I'm really curious to hear how this American perspective can generate a renewal also inside the Catholic Church in the context of this tradition, then certainly the United States remains an experiment difficult to understand from the perspective of Italy or the Vatican. But this doesn't diminish the interest that the Holy See or Italy continuously have for the United States. The Holy See because, well, this is the site of kind of the first line of modernity, Navantard of modernity for the Italian state. Well, because the immigrants that came four generations ago have now created kind of an internal market where Italian products come to the US and they are immediately, well, Received because like the immigrants that came, created that micro market that is lasting. And this is the key for the success of Made in Italy also in the present.
- [53:10]
Caleb Zakrin
Right. I live in New York City where there's such a large Italian American community. And you know, there's nothing like those, you know, there's Italian, you know, there's sort of Italian mini marths where they have like the best, you know, you can get like the best chili, Calabrian chilies and you know, they usually have the best sandwiches in the world.
- [53:28]
Luca Cottini
So what is fascinating is their recognize, the recognition. So these are all products that are immediately recognizable, whereas many other nations would not have that same lack of, or exposure where the American audience or the American clientele can recognize immediately certain words or products. Oh, this is Italian. This is the outcome, the long term outcome of immigration. A hundred years later it becomes kind of a built in market. So that's why Italians are very interested in the United States also, because it's like the largest market for many Italian companies. Right?
- [54:06]
Caleb Zakrin
Yeah, it's so fascinating. And the Italian American culture has also become its own thing unto itself. I mean, you talk a little bit the book about Italian Americanism, obviously we didn't get that much of a chance to get into it. There's so much that we really were not able to get into. You talk about the influence of pragmatism, you talk about Montessori, you talk about so many different things that we weren't able to touch. So I think if anyone is interested in this, I think that this is such an important topic and I think it'll also be something that people are going to be discussing and thinking a lot about in the context of changing relationship between America and Europe and Italy's place in Europe and also the, you know, the upcoming Olympics in, in Milan too. I think a lot of people will be thinking a lot about Italy's place in the world. It's very, very uniquely positioned, I think. So it'll be interesting to see what happens, what happens with Pope Leo and that, that, that relationship as well. So, Luke, it was really wonderful to get the chance to speak with you about this book and you know, really, really a lot of fun. If I recommend, in addition to, to listeners checking out the book, I also recommend you check out Luca's YouTube channel, Italian Innovators, which I'll link to in the show notes as well, where he digs into in a very easily accessible way, different famous Italians who have contributed to culture, to development, to all sorts of things. Luca, I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that front as well.
- [55:33]
Luca Cottini
Well, definitely what you said. And this is like the place where observing these stories, these case stories, I connect the world of business to the world of culture and the world of within this global scenario that we also outlined in our conversation. So in the realms of fashion, cars, design, even recently I published an episode on Leo the 13th. So if you're interested. So thanks absolutely for having me. It's been a pleasure discussing with you.
- [56:06]
Caleb Zakrin
It was great speaking with you. Thank you so much for being a guest.
- [56:20]
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- [56:48]
Caleb Zakrin
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